


Moxibustion

by Dantooine



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: (before the fic), Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blood and Injury, Canonical Character Death, Don’t copy to another site, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Hoth (Star Wars), Movie: Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, Nightmares, POV Cassian Andor, Post-Battle of Scarif, Post-Battle of Yavin, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Unreliable Narrator, apologies to han fans, reduced age gap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-06
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:48:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25684534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dantooine/pseuds/Dantooine
Summary: "a substance burning closeto the body as possiblewithout risk of immolation.”― Alice Fulton
Relationships: Cassian Andor/Leia Organa
Kudos: 13





	Moxibustion

_Waves lap against a sandy beach. They leave the shore as quickly as they reach it, cresting just before arrival and scattering as they disappear into the depths._ _F_ _orever transformed by the short-lived interaction with the land, the only reminders of the waves' existence are the ripples they leave behind._

 _To the battle-weary mind, the beach's soft, pale sand appears to be the snow found on a world far from this one. It burns, like snow does, fueled by the fire birthed in the hearts of the stars hanging low in_ _Scarif's brilliant sky._

* * *

Cassian Andor startles awake to cold durasteel under his cheek and his pulse roaring in his ears. His breath rushes out of him, surrendering its warmth to Hoth's frigid air. Screwing his eyes shut, Cassian latches on to the trailing end of the thought. _Hoth. Hoth. Hoth._ As it echoes, the name of the planet the Alliance has settled on starts to sound like the word for caliente in Basic. _Hot._

Whoever chose the name had an awful sense of humor. 

The cold latches onto every sliver of his exposed skin, its grip as tight on his senses as it is on his durasteel table. Cassian finds some comfort in its inevitability, and the reminder that Scarif blazing shoreline is, at least physically, part of the past.

Eventually, his heartbeat returns to its resting rhythm and his breath is once again even. When Cassian opens his eyes, the the glow of his datapad's screen greets him with a reminder of the day's duties. The time on his chrono tells him he'd slept for a couple fitful hours at most. It's more sleep than he'd gotten in the past few days. 

He's gone longer with less. 

Cassian sits up. He immediately feels the repercussions of falling asleep at his desk ripple down his spine like hot coals. Grimacing, he moves slowly through the rest of his morning, not wanting to strain cold muscles he'd struggled for so long to heal. His efforts don't stop his lower back from twinging when he leans down to pull on his synthfur-lined boots, however, and he has to reach out to the wall for support.

His hands tell a different story. They remain steady as he zips up layer after layer of clothing, unhindered in the cold that paralyzes others. However sluggish it may seem, Cassian's Festian blood has not yet failed him. It's a modicum of relief on a morning where entertaining the idea of comfort is beyond the realm of his imagination. Much less his future.

The control room is one of the few places on base reminiscent of the Great Temple. Overflowing with consoles and databanks, it's setup is an echo of the war room on Yavin where Cassian spent most of his hours on base, just smaller and obviously colder. Despite all the hours he's already spent here he's still not sure if he finds comfort in the reminder of the abandoned base. 

Cassian claims a spot around the central meeting table just as General Rieekan and a few select members of the Council filter into the small space. Few spare him a second glance, not without the tapping of a cane to draw their attention. Cassian doesn't mind. He prefers it. It would surprise few to learn that a man raised to hide in the shadows will learn to find solace in them. After all, being seen is often a death sentences for people like him. 

Heads turn towards the entrance as Princess-turned-General Leia Organa walks in. Trailed by a gold protocol droid, she greets those who wish her a good morning with a smile that flashes like a comet in an empty sky. The antithesis to Cassian's existence, Leia was raised not to merely shine in the spotlight, but to bend the might of suns to her will. 

She is everything he cannot be.

Cassian offers Leia a polite nod when she passes him, not expecting her to linger long enough for him to give her anything more. But their gazes brush together and the look in Leia's dark eyes makes Cassian shiver. Under the grace of a princess and the authority of a General lies a layer of frost. What that layer obscured was unknowable to him and the rest of the beings in this room, at least in the brief moment it takes for Leia to return his nod before being swept into a conversation with Mon Mothma.

The protocol droid lingers to introduce himself to Cassian. As he exchanges pleasantries with Threepio, Cassian's attention is on Leia. 

She had smiled at him, once, long ago. It was nothing like the flimsy gesture of peace she wears now. It was impulsive, honest, unabashed in its brilliance - capable of warming even the coldest of hearts. Leia was young, then, shadowing her father on a visit to Base One. Cassian was young, too, despite having nothing to show for it. 

All Cassian can think now is that Leia also had her youth snatched away from her, despite everything he and others had sacrificed to prevent it. 

* * *

_The rain leaves no surface untouched. It thoroughly soaks the layers of his jacket, imprisoning him in his own damp skin. It beads on the surface of his rifle before spilling down its hard angles and disappearing into the dark chasm below. It wets his fingers, running down their length to slip through the narrow gap between his wrist and his coat, pooling at the junction where he elbow rests on the rocky outcropping._

_It drips from his hair into his eyes, masking the warmer, saltier tracks that stream down his cheeks._

* * *

Cassian balls his cold hands into fists. Finding them stiffer than he'd like, he raises his hands to his mouth and blows on them to ease their numbness while taking in his surroundings. Evening traffic filters through Echo Base's main hangar, the hum of activity a sharp contrast to the monotonous view of the world outside. An uninterrupted sea of white stretches as far as the eye can see. Only the sky changes here, limited to a range between blue to black, interrupted frequently by dense skies thick with snow. At the moment, the sky heavy with storm clouds colouring it a dull grey. 

Officially, Cassian has no reason to be here. Modifying the Alliance's fleet of old T-47's doesn't fall under the purview of Intelligence agents, much less handlers. But Cassian was used to taking on unofficial projects for the Alliance, and helping a few mechanics wrangle speeders into behaving in freezing temperatures was the least offensive of all of them. All that mattered to him was whether he could do the job. 

He's about to find out.

Fingers sufficiently warmed, Cassian returns to work, screwing antifreeze tubing into a newly installed nozzle. He runs his fingers along the length of the tube, searching for kinks or perforations and smoothing them out. When he's finally satisfied with the set up, Cassian shoves his hands back into his gloves, the grease on his fingers notwithstanding. He had come to terms with the fact that fighting for freedom would leave him with stains he would never be able to wash out. 

Cassian ducks into the cockpit to test the de-icing system when he hears shouting.

The main hangar is large, carved out from an icy cavern that carries the echoes of everything from a U-Wing's spluttering engine or a spanner clattering on the ground. Perhaps these echos were what gave the base its name.

In all that noise, it takes a moment for Cassian to place the voices. It's Han Solo, shouting at Leia in one of the corridors leading into the hangar. He can't fathom ever yelling at Leia for several reasons. It not being in his nature was only one of them. Leia is not one to mince her words. She wields her insults with lethal accuracy. Cassian isn't sure if Solo doesn't understand the extent to which Leia is eviscerating him, or if the smuggler simply didn't care. Cassian wouldn't put either reasoning past him. He's not sure which was more indicative of his unsuitability for the cause, either.

His thoughts drift to Leia. Her unhappiness at Solo's decision to leave the Alliance was understandable. The loss was threefold: he'd take Chewbacca, the YT-class freighter, and a part of Leia's heart with him. 

The echoes of the fiery shouting match fade away as quickly as they'd begun. Amid the chattering of pilots and the clanging of machinery, Cassian seems to be the only one who has noticed. He stares at the speeder's dashboard before toggling the de-icing switch. A beat later, antifreeze sprays from the nozzle. The windshield wipers start up with jagged motions that eventually peter into something more acceptable. Cassian allows himself a moment to appreciate it. Rare is the opportunity for him to take pride in a completed task. 

Sitting in the pilot's seat, he noticed the wobbly line of Leia's lonely reflection on the windshield. 

It's odd seeing her alone, and even more odd that only a handful of people have acknowledged her appearance in the hangar. The few heads turn to regard her quickly resume their paused tasks once they realize she hadn't arrived to make a moral-boosting speech to the troops, or chase after the departing Falcon.

She'd dwindled from a shining star to a lonely candle. The thought turns bitterly in the base of Cassian's stomach, and he's not sure why. 

* * *

_At night, they visit. Rue. Rodma. Tonc, Sefla, Pao, the others. As a memory of smiling faces in the hangar, or a tune sung drunkenly in the humidity of Yavin's nighttime. As understanding gazes after a hard mission, or as hands clasped together in remembrance._

_They knew. They'd known when they signed up, and they knew when they stepped foot on that stolen Imperial shuttle._ _It didn't make it any easier. He was the one who'd told them. He was the one who'd rounded them up like livestock for slaughter. He knows some of them joined because he'd asked, and now they were dead for the same reason. His word. Him._

_Rebellions were built on hope, and as far as he knew, hope was easily shared through a voice. And all the voices of hope he knew had met the same fate as the slit throat of a songbird. Eternal silence._

* * *

Predictability is as lethal to a spy as it is soothing to a soldier. Since Echo Base's establishment, Cassian has spent more time as the latter, and so he settles into his usual seat at a workdesk in the corner of the command room with some resignation. Quieter than the hangar, the command room still buzzes with the crackle of incoming transmissions and alerts. 

Located in the heart of the base, the command room is well protected. Cassian's seat is pushed up against a corner, simultaneously in the heart of the action and hidden in the shadows. Old habits die hard. 

His senses prickle just before Leia strides into the room. He's never seen her here this late at night, but her appearance doesn't surprise him. What does surprise him is her decision to walk up to his table. 

"Mind if I join you?" she asks. 

If he had not spent a lifetime coughing up responses at a moment's notice, Cassian might've balked. Stunned, but careful not to show it, he replies: "not at all, your Highness." They study each other for a moment before Cassian, warmth rising to his cheeks, drops his gaze and returns to his datapad. There's nothing requiring his attention this late at night, but of the many things Cassian cared about, losing sleep didn't make the list.

Disrupted by Leia's presence, Cassian's mind wanders. He waits for her to speak, for a shooter to emerge from the shadows, for Commander Skywalker to whisk her away. Nothing happens.

Leia leaves after a couple hours of silently working on her own datapad.

"Good night, Captain Andor," she says softly. By the time he starts to reply, Leia is gone. His response melts on his tongue like a snowflake. He doesn't mind. There was never any good in his long, cold nights, and Leia's abrupt ways had spared him from telling yet another lie.

Anyone who knew of his past - none of whom live - might believe he feels at home in Hoth's chilly embrace. Reality is rarely this simple. True, his homeworld of Fest was also covered in ice and snow. Where Hoth was cold without reprieve, however, Fest had a spring. And under its snowbanks, Fest had soil. Real soil, around the equator, not permafrost. Soil that held the promise of life - soil that gave rise to food and flowers and hope. 

If Hoth had a heart, it was made of ice, or rock, or something similarly unforgiving. Fest had a heart of fire, flickering even as Separatist hands clawed into its depths for phrik. Even as the Empire drank Fest's open veins dry. Even as its horizon of mountain ranges was marred by refineries belching grey-green plumes of smoke. Even as its soil became barren.

They said Fest's heart lived on in its children, but as Cassian walks back to his quarters, footsteps echoing off in the icy corridors, he thinks Hoth's cold heart suits him after all. 

* * *

_Trapped between two battlefields, a solitary figure stands at the end of the transmissions tower. Standing is a generous description: she leans against the console, her life leaking between her fingers as the wind whips her hair into a frenzy._ _Red r_ _uns along the base of the console, dripping through the grate to the planet surface a dizzying distance below. She doesn't look. She knows if she does, the only thing she will see are sandy shores speckled with bodies._

_She uses the last of her energy to stand defiant in the face of the Death Star._

* * *

For most of his life, Cassian knew Leia only as a distant blur. The princess lurking behind her mother's skirt, the aide swallowed by her father's shadow, the Senator dwarfed by the sea of podiums. He saw her name in Intelligence reports, wariness turning to resigned praise as she established herself as one of the Alliance's most valuable sources of information. Sometimes Cassian had been the one to retrieve it and also face the consequences. Any misjudgment from Leia meant a blaster discharged in a quiet hallway and a body neatly rearranged in a bedroom. 

Luckily, her skills were refined as her table manners. 

They'd hardly met before her promotion to General. Before Scarif's injuries, Cassian rarely spent time on Alliance bases. He figures he might've spent more time wearing Imperial green than in his quarters on Yavin. Leia's stints on Base One were even shorter than his. 

At most, there interactions were through datachips and notes in reports meant for others. At most, Cassian was a nameless shadow lingering at the fringes of a Council meeting. A sun to his stalagmite of ice, Leia was never around when he spoke to the Council, as missions undertaken by the nineteen year old were inappropriate for the Senator one year his junior. 

He doesn't resent Leia for any of it. Cassian might've, long ago, when he had a tongue of fire ready to lash out at any too-clean hand reaching out to help. But Cassian knew nuance now, and more than that he understood the ways of the Empire. They needed allies from all places, whether he liked it or not. Anyone could be a spook like him. Only few could be leaders like Leia. 

She was a sun to his stalagmite of ice, and a smile from her kept him alive on the coldest of nights. Cassian had no time for crushes during a war, and there was only one way Festian snipers could set their sights on Alderaanian princesses. But he'd clung onto the fragments of that memory of her and her father on Yavin, that scrap of recognition, assurance, whatever he'd so desperately needed on the mission that followed.

He hasn't seen a smile like it from her since. In their meetings, in the hallways, even in the mess sitting with General Skywalker or Lieutenant Bey. She might have in the wake of the Death Star's destruction, but Cassian hadn't been awake to see it. 

He'd spent days in bacta and weeks drifting out of consciousness. Reality was less bearable than the nightmares. He couldn't move, could barely speak, and the medics refused to tell him anything. Wakefulness was slow immolation to both his body and mind.

The fall from the tower hadn't killed him, but those early days came close. Had Cassian not been trained to handle the worst of Imperial torture, he might've shattered. Cassian isn't sure he made it out whole, either. He hasn't been whole in a long time. Much like the solitary U-Wing in the hangar, Cassian limped his way out of Scarif, battered, broken, and without use.

His tether to the galaxy was a datapad he'd found on his bedside table, hidden under a tray of medicines. Cassian didn't know who'd left it there, but all hints pointed to Draven. While unlikely that the pragmatic General of Intelligence would rebel against his own directive, the datapad came with Cassian's usual level of security clearance, which few had the authority to grant. Besides, who else knew Cassian well enough to realize the isolation would only make him feel more useless, and less worth of living. 

Cassian never had the chance to ask Draven. His longtime handler was killed while Cassian was in recovery, leaving behind a vacancy in Alliance Intelligence as his youngest agent's inheritance. When Cassian found out - through reading a report on the same datapad - he'd returned it to the quartermaster.

The one he types on now is Alliance-issue, almost identical if not for the lack of scuff marks. Leia's is a newer model, but sports a crack on its screen. She doesn't seem to care. 

It's one of the few things about Leia he's learned as she's sat down to work across him every night. Cassian's noticed she types in the same efficient style taught in Imperial academies and that she goes to drink caf from her flask long after it's run dry. He's learned that she sighs every time she reads a poorly written report, and recognizes the stillness overcomes her every time she learns of a life lost - Alliance or not. 

The cracked screen is something a teenage princess might brandish to seem rebellious. A cracked screen is a fact of life in a resource-strapped Rebellion. Odd, how the meanings and interpretations of the same action can change with time. Odd, how a heart can go fond of someone who he could've easily despised. 

Leia is a star, after all. 

"Good night," Cassian says first, just as Leia gets up to leave.

Her eyebrows go down as quickly as they arch up. "Good night," she replies, the only change being the added brightness in her voice. 

Cassian holds onto those words for warmth until he sees Hoth's sun again.

* * *

_The Guardian calls his name. He turns. "Your gloves." He'd been searching for them in all the wrong places._

_Part of him, the part he hates and the part that keeps him alive wonders if the blind Guardian had hidden them on purpose._ _But why would a monk want to chat with someone he supposedly, and accurately, called a killer?_

_"Thank you." He takes the gloves. "For everything," he adds._

_The older man smiles. "May the Force always be with your priorities, Captain."_

* * *

"Are the speeders ready yet?" Leia asks him, one night. The question on its own seems insignificant, even when spoken by a woman known for only speaking with substance. As it was, its meaning was far greater than the sum of each word. Firstly, she'd broken their unspoken agreement to stay silent. Secondly, Cassian didn't know she cared about the speeders beyond the line they claimed in transport and material reports. Thirdly, and most notably, he hadn't realized she knew he was helping with the project. 

"Vehicle modifications fall under Deen Voorson's jurisdiction," Cassian says, wanting to give credit where it is due. A wrinkle forms between Leia's eyebrows. He'd made a mistake - perhaps she thought he was correcting her, or worse, implying that he didn't want to talk to her. "But I know they'll need at least another week."

The wrinkle disappears.

When Leia surrenders to her poorly muffled yawns and turns in for the night, Cassian catches himself missing the warmth she takes with her. He'd never had such luxuries while out in the field facing snow, or rain, or a simple chill. Her nods of understanding, the soft voice she slips on when sharing a memory, her utter disregard for the norms of Imperial high class society - none of it is enough to keep him or anyone else from freezing over night.

Yet Cassian is a sensible man. He knows better than to waste what little comes his way. Like the scrap material stowed under his bunk, he holds fleeting moments in his heart. Like embers, they offer flickers of reprieve on the coldest, harshest of nights. Kay's quips, Draven's nods of approval, sunrise on Yavin, Rue laughing before he finishes a joke, a ration bar shared with a tooka-cat. A conversation with Leia.

The next time they sit together in the command room, after returning from a mission to Rodia with Skywalker, she repeats the same question: "Are the speeders ready yet?"

Cassian's response is the same, but with an added explanation to keep her satiated: "the engines have been causing some trouble, but I think we've figured it out." 

Leia's lips curl in the same direction as her arched eyebrow. "What is it about them?" 

His explanation starts slowly, the tentative first flecks of a snowstorm. When Leia shows interest beyond the noncommittal hums of someone realizing they'd unleashed an avalanche of technical jargon, Cassian delves deeper. He doesn't just tell her about the T-47's inner workings, but how the project exists at the intersection between the Alliance's access to hyperspace lanes, the Imperial stronghold of Kuat, and their own supply shortages. 

This results in two immediate consequences: Cassian's datapad shutting off from lack of use, and Leia's caf freezing over. It doesn't stop her from bombarding him with a series of more questions the following night. And the next. And the next. Their nightly work period becomes a strategy session and yet Cassian does not mourn the loss of quiet.

Eventually talks of supply routes devolve into discussions about the tea varieties they find most tolerable. Some of which no longer exist. After all, everything about themselves, even their preferred beverages, were inextricably tied to war. If not for war, an Imperial Senator would have no reason to talk to a mechanic from the Rim. If not for war, neither of them would be here - for better, or for worse. 

* * *

_Consciousness reaches him as a brief flutter of his eyelashes. It is a small mercy, he thinks later, considering all that had happened and all that was to come. A gift of one final memory._

_In the moment, he doesn't understand. He's floating, but he feels like he's falling. The sound of blasterbolts clashes with the screeching of failing motors. His hand grazes against some soft substance that burns him, but his back burns with a thousand times the power. Nothing makes sense - his vision is blurred, streaked by familiar blue-black melding with a sea of white._

_Sand, fire, snow, metal. The sights and sensations jumble in his mind and linger as one weary thought before he blacks out:_ **_he's going home._**

* * *

"I won't break anything," Leia says after Cassian takes too long to respond. "I promise." 

Promises are worth nothing in a war. For all Leia has seen and lost she manages to believe in them. Cassian runs a hand through his hair, an old tic of his starting up again as he considers her promise. Asking to see the speeders was one thing. Commendable, even. Working on them is something entirely different. He's not sure why he's surprised - Leia was never one to stay put in command, unlike some of her peers. Most of the reports he'd read during his recovery came from her. 

It's also why he knows he shouldn't be hesitating. 

"That's not what I was worried about, your Highness." He takes in her neatly braided hair, unsoiled jacket, and most importantly, her white gloves. Nothing about her was out of place. _Everything_ about her was out of place, no matter how much she tried.

Cassian didn't have to look at himself to know, despite the great care he took to maintain his appearance, everything about him was stained and broken.

"I'm worried you'll break something that isn't replaceable."

Leia quirks her eyebrow. "Like what?" The corner of her mouth twitches. He hoped his concern wasn't coming off as patronizing. She was more than what others expected of her, after all, and more than what the Alliance needed her to be. Leia is a princess, a senator, a soldier, a General - a daughter, a friend, a fighter. And she is more than the sum of all those things.

Leia tilts her head at him, as if trying to listen to his thoughts. Cassian reigns them in. "If I hurt myself with a _spanner_ then that's my own fault." 

His gaze flickers over her. He sets his jaw. "Well, if you'll say that in the event you-"

"Oh, I will." She smiles, a tight lipped expression that isn't able to temper the sparks lighting in her eyes. Cassian hands her a spanner with the same level of care he would offer a blaster. Leia takes it with just as much finesse. He relaxes a little. 

"I would appreciate it if you checked those bolts," he says, pointing to a panel on the side of the speeder. "Tighten them if they're loose. You can keep your gloves on." Leia nods and falls to a crouch as she surveys the object of Cassian's latest affections. Cassian watches her while moving to pop open the hood. He starts to fiddle with some wiring as Leia begins to work. 

"You're giving me the busy work, aren't you?" Leia remarks with a smirk.

"Not at all," he replies, the response coming more smoothly than anything he's said to Leia that didn't involve war or the Alliance. "Imagine that flying off at 400 kilometres an hour." He peers over at Leia, whose mouth is twisted in focus. 

"I suppose you're right." 

In reality, Cassian was the one doing busy work. It was the easiest way to keep an eye on Leia while affording her some sense of independence. The thought gives him pause. 

This is exactly how he used to handle Kay. How many times had the droid pestered him for a blaster, or asked Cassian to let him do something? How often had Cassian tried to reason with him in an attempt to keep his friend safe?

He hadn't had to do so since Operation Fracture. Since Jyn gave him a blaster, to be exact.

Cassian sets his hands on either side of the speeder's frame. His mind stills, and the sound of the spanner running blurs into a dull hum. Slowly, he lets out a shaky breath. His knuckles are white, grip deathly tight on the speeder. He narrows his focus on the coldness in his lungs and how it escapes him as a slightly warmed puff of air. as he starts to time his breathing to the rhythm of a sniper's heart. Artificial lighting hums over his head, a mouse droid beeps in the distance, someone coughs, and then, the whir of the spanner suddenly cuts off.

"All done," Leia says, and Cassian lets the last breath rush out before straightening to face Leia. "Should I check the rest of them?"

"Sure," he replies, examining her handiwork. "Looking good. I mean, your work looks good, your Highness." Cassian's pulse quickens once more, this time thumping to a brighter, warmer beat. He hopes any colour in his face will be attributed to the cold. 

Leia doesn't seem to notice. "Y'know, you used to call me Princesa," she says, tilting her head. Cassian blinks. Leia settles back down to check the bolts on the next panel. Cassian had barely interacted with her before the Death Star mission, especially not when he was young enough to call Leia _Princesa,_ of all things.

Barely, but he had.

He didn't think she'd remember. 

"I was young, then, and new to the Alliance. My apologies."

Leia sets the spanner on the floor and gives him the same look he's seen her give Threepio, sometimes. "In case you've forgotten, so was I." 

Cassian inclines his head, conceding the point. "Fair enough, your Highness."

Dusting off her gloves, Leia stands up and leans against the speeder. "By the way," Leia whispers, voice low and conspiratorial, "you can call me Leia if nobody's around."

There's half a squadron of pilots, at least five mechanics, and fifteen droids spread out around the hangar for the night shift. "As you'd like, your Highness." Cassian replies. Leia frowns. She opens her mouth to offer a rebuttal, but a yawn escapes her instead.

Leia claps a hand over her mouth, eyes wide. Cassian stifles a snort. "Perhaps you should retire for the night," he says with earnest professionalism. "The speeder will be waiting for you."

"I don't think that will be necessary," Leia says, echoing his cordial tone. "I'll only hold the project back."

"We will lose a valued team member, then." Leia smiles, but it doesn't reach the full breadth of the one he remembers. He doesn't know why he keeps looking for it.

* * *

_The falling snow is as soft and and light as the fur lining his parka. His hands sink deep into it, the promise of endless creation at his fingertips outweighing the damp cold seeping through his mittens. He carves out rooms, builds walls, and is working on the roof when a_ _hand reaches out from behind him._ _He doesn't turn - he has no reason to be afraid - and the phantom hand dusts snowflakes from his hood._

 _"_ _Fest has a heart of fire, mijo," the man behind him says. His father, watching him plough a miniature crop of ice. "Snow, soil, and fire. It's all there is on Fest, and it's all you need to survive it._ _Water, food, and warmth. Just like_ _the hot chocolate waiting for you inside."_

_His father grins, and he abandons the house of snow._

* * *

After running the speeders through simulations in the hangar, Cassian returns to the command room only to find Leia still talking to stragglers from their earlier meeting. Long work days weren't unusual for anyone in the Alliance. They were fighting a war, after all, not doing datawork, though Cassian's experience on Echo Base was more like the latter. He is bundled up against Hoth's cold, yet feels the chill deep in his heart. While he leans against a wall and watches Leia discuss the Alliance's fleet with Admiral Ackbar, rebel agents across the galaxy are one misstep away from tasting the bitterness of a lullaby pill.

Cassian had been one of them until Scarif had put him on bed rest. Then, Draven had died, and forced him into a promotion in all but name. It was Cassian who'd rejected the title, offered to him the same day Rogue Squadron was named. Spies and saboteurs understood both the power and the pointlessness of language. A rebellion built on hope still asks for payment in blood. Cassian would pay the price, but never celebrate it.

The speeder project had kept both his hands and his heart busy, but with it near completion he's going to have to find something else to do. Or ask to be put into the field again, rank be kriffed. It would be better for everyone. 

Cassian nods at Admiral Ackbar as the Mon Calamari exits the room. His attention shifts back to Leia, standing in front of one of the maps, its language of lines and circles colouring her snowy white outfit a vibrant blue-green. If Rue was alive, he'd crack a joke about the way Cassian was staring. 

Threepio totters up to the Princess. She turns to answer him, and her gaze slides against his. Leia flashes him a brief smile that manages to warm him from his head to his toes. She sends the protocol droid on his way, and Threepio passes Cassian without noticing him in the shadows.

Leia is still looking at him.

They're alone as they can be, a princess and a spy, with most of the analysts dismissed earlier yet to return. A skeleton crew monitor the consoles, busy managing the ceaseless flow of information. Everything from agents' transmissions to flight formations were intercepted and disseminated right here. It was easy to lose oneself here, where Cassian had sought refuge as soon as he'd been discharged, especially with no way of telling day from night.

Cassian leans off the wall when Leia approaches him. Even from here he can see the shifting display of clinging to her features, battling with the blue-green highlights caressing the outline of her cheeks. 

"So," she starts, "what do you think?"

Cassian had spoken his piece in an earlier meeting. It wasn't surprising that the Empire had sent out probes to search for their base. Some of his agents had already reported sightings of them.

"I think whatever we do, we should move carefully," he replies. One suggestion had been to send starfighters out to hunt down the probes. There was no way the Alliance could match the sheer numbers of the Empire, but if enough of them reported false positives the probes might be called off. It came with the risk of spreading their fleet out too thin. To do nothing, however, meant risking losing the base the Alliance had spent almost two years to find and build. "But we should be prepared for the worst."

Leia lets out a low sigh. "I suppose that's not a surprise, is it?" It's a rhetorical question. Hope kept them going, but a blow so severe would diminish anyone's outlook, even after their success on Yavin. Especially Leia. Cassian can't quite tell if her shoulders are slumping or if she's just craning to look up at him.

"All we can do is hope for the best," he offers as consolation, the words tasting like ash in his mouth. Leia brightens, though. It's enough to make him feel grateful for the power of his own silver tongue.

"Shall we?" she asks, and juts her head towards what Cassian has come to think of as their table. He hadn't built it, and he couldn't claim it even if he had. Yet the warmth in Leia's tone, despite her weariness, is enough to melt those icy thoughts.

Until now, neither of them had actually addressed their almost nightly routine. It was usually Leia who interrupted the patterns, who left every time she caught word of an Alderaani resettlement or was pulled into socializing with a recently returned Lieutenant Bey. 

But Cassian always stays.

Cracken was in the Outer Rim, and it fell on him to manage the Alliance's agents spread thin throughout the galaxy. He's not sure if he'll ever see the field again, and he's not sure how much of that is rank, and how much of it is the doubt clinging to his injuries from Scarif. 

Leia renounces her usual seat in favour of the one she settles into beside him, bringing them far closer than they've been in a long time. "Threepio said he was going to fetch us some tea," Leia says once they've settled in. "He's been adamant on making sure I have a cup every evening since... well, for as long as I can remember." Cassian keeps his expression neutral, but Leia is no stranger to the disparity between soldiers and princesses. "It's a little silly, I know."

"Not at all," he replies. And it isn't. Sure, evening tea was something Cassian exclusively associated with high ranking Imperials until he'd met Tivik and his Jedhan tea habits for the first time. Even if he hadn't, Cassian would be the last person to question one of the few Alderaanian rituals Leia had managed to keep. He can only imagine how the sweetest of teas would taste in the aftermath of its destruction. "It's kind of him."

"It is. Thought I think he does it for himself. He's happiest doing things like that. I mean, I know he's a protocol droid and it's in his programming, but..." she sighs, "maybe he's just happy I haven't forgotten my table manners." 

"I suppose we're all happiest doing the things we do best," Cassian replies. It was his truth, after all.

"Perhaps," Leia says in a light tone, but Cassian notices her mulling over it long after Threepio returns with a flask of tarine. Cassian is familiar with the galactic staple, but when Threepio pours it out it smells suspiciously of mint. One taste tells Cassian why.

"I neglected to bring sweetener or milk, I'm afraid, since I prepared this to the Princess' tastes. I can retrieve some if you wish, Captain," Threepio frets. 

"That won't be necessary," Cassian replies, offering the droid a smile. "Thank you." The droid, excused by Leia, leaves with reluctance, and Cassian watches with some amusement as Threepio exits the command room to the sound of an astromech chirping in the corridor. 

"He adds mint syrup," Leia explains, once Threepio is out of sight. 

"I understand," Cassian says. "I've had Alderaani mint tea before."

"So you have." They spend the rest of the night in remembrance of drinks shared long ago. 

And so tea becomes a part of their nightly ritual, even when Threepio is nowhere to be seen. The hot drink is a much of an antidote to Hoth's cold as Leia is, making their absence on some nights even colder. 

* * *

_Kay unlocks the turbolift to the transmissions tower before the comms fizzle out. No Kay, no Bodhi, no connection to the outside world._

_The doors hiss open and he follows Jyn into the lift, the datatape dangling from her belt. When the doors fall shut, Jyn turns to face him. In that moment, the galaxy shrinks to fit inside the small square of space they share. His gaze finds hers. As the lift lurches upwards, Scarif's hazy sunlight filters through the minimal transparisteel and falls as stardust in her eyes and glowing brushstrokes on her lips. His gaze lingers there, pulled by the question resting in the curve of her mouth as it parts._

_He knows what answer he will offer her, if she asks. But they aren't given the time._

_The_ _turbolift screeches to a premature stop. When the doors slide open, time blurs. His blaster at home in his hand;_ _the crack of black plastoid shattered by Jyn's feet; his blaster skittering across the floor; Jyn falling to her knees; and the flutter of a white cape as the two men fall into an abyss._

* * *

The scream of blasterbolts fill the icy cavern. Cassian pulls the trigger, again and again, until the training holo fizzles out and he has to wait for it to reboot. 

He lets out a sigh, the puff of air visible this far from the center of the base. Cassian had been planning on spending the night in the hangar, working through the last of the speeder adjustments and burying his memories under streams of data and final modifications. But Deen had told him the speeders passed their first flight test that morning. The younger man grinned as he said it. Cassian had to strip himself down to his bones to make his congratulations sound genuine. They were, of course.

The ability to use snowspeeders instead of tauntauns was a great step forward for operations on Base. But Cassian no longer has a distraction from his memories.

He'll find something else, eventually. Tomorrow he might put in a proposal for field assignment.

Tonight he loses himself in the deadly art of firing a blaster. The blasterbolts give voice to the worst of his thoughts, burning as hot as the tears doomed to dry in his eyes. He'd long discarded what ifs - once told to do so by Draven, later wrung them out in recovery. It doesn't mean he isn't haunted by the sight of Jyn taking a blasterbolt to her stomach, or the terrible crunching sound following him tacking Krennic into the open air of the data vault.

All he'd wanted was to buy Jyn some time. 

Eventually, the repetitive cycle of aiming and firing numbs him like the cold taking hold of his fingers. The hazy form of the training holo pushes out the imagery of the bloodbaths on Scarif and Jenoport and a hundred other warzones. Numbers on the console flash as they tick upward, struggling to summarize his speed, accuracy, and precision. Cassian pays the statistics no attention. He knows what they will say, anyways, the same thing everyone said about him. 

_Lethal._

Cassian was never one to accept victory. There was always more work to do. The speeders will need maintenance. The Empire will come up with new threats to wield. And there will be more blasters to wield. 

He hasn't used an A-180 since he'd lost it on Scarif. Since Jyn had taken it - since she had given it to Kay. But he wields it now, shooting down a B2 battle droid, a trio of stormtroopers, an armored bounty hunter. There are no lives inside the blue-hued shells of light and Cassian fires without hesitation. Over, and over again, until the smell of ozone clogs his senses and his muscles burn with violent heat. The holo starts to flicker violently as it tries to shift forms quick enough to keep up with him, corrupting the image of his targets. Overheated, it shuts down entirely before he can reach the final level.

Cassian sets the borrowed blaster back in its place with a sense of finality. It said a lot about him if a holoprojector couldn't keep up with - what, exactly he wasn't sure. It wasn't fury. Anger was quick burning, and had stopped fueling him long ago. It still thrummed under his pulse, a dulled sense of heat waiting to spark. The last time he'd fallen into its furnace was while rainwater pooled at his feet. Jyn's anger was contagious. No wonder so many had died in its flames.

An A-280 catches his eye - a blaster rifle, currently in sniper configuration. His own still sits on his hip, but he hasn't had to assemble it into a rifle since Scarif. Cassian still wields it like a third arm, and doesn't have to see the gauge to know it's low on charge. 

His comm buzzes. Cassian sets the blaster down and answers it.

"Are the speeders ready?" Leia asks without preamble, her voice unusually tight. She's never commed him before, but he was fairly sure this wasn't standard for both the Alliance and Leia herself.

"They are." Cassian doesn't need context to know something is amiss. The sound of her voice tells him everything. His unease drowns out what slight warmth he might've felt at Leia's acknowledgement of the project, and by extension, them, outside of their nighttime tea ritual.

A static-ridden sigh fills the comm - no, a shaky sigh. He's already started making his way down to the command room when he hears her shout orders to someone outside the range of the comm. Cassian thinks she's left the comm on by mistake, but as he rounds the corner leading to the medbay, Leia says in a chillingly neutral voice:

"Luke's missing." 

By the time Cassian makes it into the command room he's pieced together most of the story. He'd heard about tauntaun disappearances and some of the earlier scouts had described caves littered with bones, but he hadn't realized the wampas would attack one with a rider still on it. Skywalker had been out on patrol, installing sensors around the perimeter of base when it had happened. It was unfortunate. Their paths rarely crossed, and Skywalker was a Jedi, but Cassian appreciated his contributions to the Alliance. Optimism and kindness went a long way in this galaxy. 

And being the man who'd destroyed the Death Star didn't hurt either.

He finds Leia standing at a console, watching three blinking dots of light: the locations of the last sensor Luke had installed, the source of his most recent transmission sent off after the attack, and the bright light indicating the speeder approaching both. Personnel flow around her, like a rock warping the flow of a river, but nobody stops to talk to her. They don't need to. Everything she needs to know is on the map in front of her, and any news will come from the pilot's transmission.

She needs something else. Cassian ventures out of the shadows, trading his usual soft footsteps for something louder that cuts through whatever fog's enveloped Leia. She turns, the light from the map blocking out her features, only illustrating the curves of her nose and lips in profile.

He nods at her. Leia's eyes meet his, the briefest acknowledgement and nothing more. They stand not quite together, as if Cassian were her shadow, and watch the circles of light until the pilot's voice comes over the comm:

"I see him!"

Leia's shoulders trembles as she lets out an inaudible sigh of relief. Cassian remains silent, until Leia turns and clasps his hand in hers. 

"I'm going to the medbay," Leia says, voice raspy. Cassian nods, then nods again, not able to think beyond the warmth spiraling out from their point of contact. He's just barely able to squeeze her hand before she leaves. 

* * *

_A hand cards through his hair, murmuring words he cannot repeat. The coolness of her hand is a balm to his feverish brow. His eyelids are too heavy to lift, barring him from glimpsing the face he so desperately wants to see._ _He tries to say her name, but the fever's hold on him is strong, and it steals his voice from his tongue_

 _"Shh," she whispers, somehow comprehending his garbled thoughts. A moment later he feels the firm softness of her lips on his_ _burning forehead._ _"Sleep, Cassian."_

_He does._

* * *

Cassian runs his hands over his face and clasps them under his chin, taking in the command room with bleary eyes.

Leia is nowhere to be seen. She hadn't returned since leaving for the medbay. He'd heard that Skywalker escaped with relatively minor injuries, which was a spot of good news in a otherwise troublesome day. Cassian didn't know why he'd chosen to stay. He could've gotten some rest in his own quarters, or dropped by the mess and helped with meal prep. Instead, he'd stayed, as if he'd expected Leia to leave Skywalker's side to come sit with him. It was a ridiculous thought, almost as ridiculous as his fleeting notion that he could help her. 

He hadn't been there for her after Alderaan. Skywalker had. 

Which is a good thing, of course. He would never wish his lonely recovery upon anyone. 

Threepio wanders into the command room, swiveling to and fro, seemingly in search for someone. Stifling a grunt, Cassian stands and makes his way over to the droid. "Threepio?" he asks. The droid turns. 

"Oh! Capain Andor!" Threepio exclaims. "Oh, my, I am glad to see you." He wrings his hands together, more nervous than usual. Cassian didn't think that was possible. "May I have a word?"

"Of course," he replies, following him out into the chill of the corridor.

Threepio drops his arms to his sides and twists his head around, scanning for passerby. Satisfied, the droid loudly proclaims: "oh, dear, oh, it's dreadful, Captain. Absolutely dreadful, and all that little droid's fault!" 

"What happened?"

"I merely noted that it was awfully cold in the Princess' quarters. The temperatures are awful for my joints, after all. But I never asked Artoo to do anything about it. He decided to turn on the thermal heater all on his own." Threepio works his fingers together, trembling with dismay. "Now all of the Princess' things are wet and I haven't the faintest idea how to dry it all. She's already so upset after Master Luke was injured. She hasn't left his side since he got back." 

"Do you need my help?"

The droid tilts his head, as if surprised by the offer. "Oh, Captain Andor, that would be wonderful! I know this is hardly a task befitting someone of your rank-"

"It's alright, Threepio."

Before Cassian can second guess himself the droid lets him into Leia's quarters. The door shutters as it opens, making a terrible grating sound as Threepio ushers him through the doorway. Her quarters are unsurprisingly larger than his, and completely covered in a thin layer of ice, as if someone had tossed a glittering blanket of frost over the entire room.

Evidently, someone had turned the heating back down to keep the room from collapsing. A wise choice, but not without consequences.

"Can it be fixed, Captain Andor?" Threepio asks softly. 

"Anything can be fixed, if one has the time and the willingness to spend it," he says, taking in the terrible beauty of the ice.

He's not sure where to look. Impressions of Leia are imbued throughout her quarters: her rumpled bedsheets, her scattered belongings, the door of her closet left slightly ajar. Cassian doesn't dare pry it open, but he can't help but notice the deep blue skirt peeking out through the open door. The eye-catching colour is similar to the robes the elder Organas once wore. He hasn't seen Leia wear anything other than white since... since he'd been on the Tantive once, long ago. Since he'd called her Princesa. Since he'd rejected Bail Organa's offer to come with him to Alderaan. Since he joined the Alliance.He doesn't know how much of Leia's wardrobe - or her things in general - survived Alderaan.

The state of her quarters take on a new meaning in that light.

Cassian ventures towards her dresser, which is littered with pins, hair elastics, various coloured powders, and a tube of what appears to be lipstick but could be a concealed weapon, for all Cassian knew. He presses his finger over one of the hairpins, letting his skin turn numb as the ice melts from the warmth of his body. Soon he's able to pick up the pin, and wipes the droplets of water left behind with the cuff of his parka. 

He can fix this. Cassian is about to tell Threepio what to do when the door grinds open once more. Leia stands in the doorway, as much a creature of ice as her quarters are. 

"Princess Leia!" Threepio exclaims. He launches into the same tale he'd told Cassian, sparing Cassian from the need to listen. He doubts he could if he wanted to. Leia stares at him with dark, beautiful eyes, weary and brightened by unshed tears she'd clearly intended to relinquish control of in private. They linger on the closet, and Cassian can only imagine what's flashing through her mind.

"Threepio," Cassian turns to the droid, who's still talking. "I think now would be a good time to fetch the Princess some tea. And if you could kindly find a heating laser, or better, some astromechs willing to help, so we can clean this mess up quickly."

"Oh! Oh yes, I will do just that, Captain. Very well." The protocol droid goes to leave the room, pausing once to gaze at Leia before hurrying out. 

Leia watches Threepio go. When the door slides shut, she turns to face Cassian.

"I'll head out as well," Cassian starts, but Leia reaches out and touches his arm, freezing him in place. Her grip on him is firm, sure, everything that Cassian is not, at least in this moment. At once he is filled with with warmth and cold, both threatening to consume him. He can see how her makeup has smudged since she'd applied it, where locks of hair have escaped the braid circling her head like a crown. She's a rebel, she's perfect, she always is and will be, but right now darkness clings around her eyes and the curve of her mouth. 

"Are you okay, Leia?" he asks quietly.

Leia's eyelids fall shut, chin dipping as she shakes her head. Cassian steps forward, trying to come up with something to say, but then Leia collides into his chest. The rest comes as easily as snow falling.

Her arms wrap around his torso, one of his cradles the back of her head. She tucks herself under his chin, he lets her rest her cheek over his stuttering heart. "It's alright," he murmurs. She makes a sound, somewhere between a gasp and a sob, evoking the image of an icicle snapped in a child's hands. He sways to the unsteady flutter of her shallow breathing, idly stroking her hair with the pad of his thumb. To avoid the tears dripping down the front of his parka, Cassian stares at Leia's frozen dresser, at the mirror covered in fractals of ice. The film blurs their reflection into a single indistinguishable smear of darkness.

It feels wrong, it feels right, it feels like the only thing Cassian was meant to do. He holds her, because the Alliance needs him to, because his rebellion, his hope, his everything, was built on the resolve of the woman in his arms, and if she crumbled the galaxy would fall with her. 

It said a lot about the unfairness of a galaxy that an entire rebellion rested on one woman's shoulders, but that's what these things came down to. A moment. A choice. A life in fire or ice. 

Cassian had chosen the latter, taken upon his own burden to shield those that would come after and those who cannot fight. He can't allow himself to claim anything more. And yet, here he is, wishing he could surrender to that image of their oneness, hold her tightly until their bodies make room for each other and their burdens are shattered. He wishes he could murmur everything his stilled tongue cannot say, that he could rub her back and ease out her sobs with reverent hands. And a dark part of him wishes he could press a gentle kiss to her forehead.

But he knows that isn't possible. Cassian is a lowly sniper, and Leia is a princess-turned-General. And both of them fight for the greater good, and until that dream can be achieved Cassian cannot let anything else get in the way. 

So he removes himself from the moment - this isn't about him and his grief, anyways - and takes in the sight of their reflections with distant eyes. 

* * *

Leia follows him to his quarters.

There are no other places for her to sleep: the barracks are overflowing, Skywalker's been shifted to his quarters, and her bunk is frozen.

It takes a few moments for him to key in the passcodes he'd added to their standard locks. Every breath that passes makes him shiver. There's nothing for Leia to see in his quarters, nothing that will turn her way like the ghosts in his own mind, yet he doesn't relax until Leia gingerly plops down on his bunk as if it was her own bed. He watches her run her hands over the wrinkles that form on his bedsheets around her, feeling uneasy and warm all at once. They're Alliance bedsheets, he reminds himself. Standard, plain white bedsheets that fit over every bunk on base. Not his.

He sets the flask of tarine Threepio prepared on his table and then walks over to his closet. Yanking the doors open, he feigns a search for his neatly stored blankets, using the moment of privacy to corral his thoughts.

Cassian pulls the thickest, least-worn blanket from the pile, and turns back to Leia, she's looking around his quarters with mild interest. He doubts she's inspecting his crisply made bunk, or the right angle his chair forms with his desk, but Cassian holds his breath regardless. He supposes the most personal items she could find would be is the stash of tools and scrap parts stowed under his bed. Or the contents of his closet - gear, weaponry, and a few jackets. He shoves the door shut with the heel of his boot.

He wordlessly sets the blanket beside Leia on the bunk, only then noticing how its swirls of colour seem garish compared to the whites of his bunk and Leia's clothing. She runs her hand over the blanket, fingers tangling in the thickly woven synthwool. He moves away to pour out a cup of tarine when Leia's voice stills him.

"Are you going to keep pretending you aren't looking at me or are you going to say something?" Leia asks. Despite the exhaustion tugging at the rest of her features, a small smile plays at her lips. 

"Is there something you want me to say, Leia?" he replies calmly, surprised at how boldly her first name rolls off his tongue. She pats the space beside her on his bed. Cassian sits down, carefully keeping a modest distance between them. She pulls the blanket into her lap. 

"Is this from...?" she starts, question fading in the way only dead planets and buried pasts can.

Cassian shakes his head. "It's from Pantora." He studies the blanket more closely, and sees similarities in the weaving to the blankets of his distant childhood. Perhaps that's why he'd been drawn to them. The rough synthwool and faded colours were far below the Imperial luxury Leia had raised in, yet as soon as Leia wraps the blanket around her shoulders it appears to be made of the finest silks, or perhaps something she might've purchased in the markets of Aldera. Everything she touched became golden. As if she were a star. Except, him, though. He burns in her fire.

"Ah," Leia nods, and his gaze follows the blanket's hypnotic patterns back to her face. She looks tired, but the earlier anguish has faded. Despite all the sadness Leia carries, Cassian knows she also has the strength to bear it all and more. 

He wishes she won't ever have to bear more.

"You should go to sleep," Cassian tells her, shifting his weight off the bed.

"Wait." Those eyes of hers, again. She's trapped him like a starfighter in a tractor beam, like a clothesline in a thunderstorm. "I..." she starts, biting her lip. He cocks his head slightly, waiting for her to continue. "Thank you, Cassian. For everything. Not many people listen to Threepio. Force, I don't listen to Threepio."

Cassian feels the urge to tell her about Kay, how the reprogrammed droid that became his best friend saved his life on Scarif. How he'd found Cassian's broken body in the Citadel and carried him across the sandy battlefield, and only succumbed to his injuries after depositing him at the nearest landing pad.

All Cassian says is: "I do my best to help."

Leia smiles at him, a warm little thing that crinkles her eyes more than her mouth. "He likes you, you know. Threepio."

"Really?"

"He thinks you've got excellent manners." She sighs. "These past couple years have been tough for him."

"They'd be tough for anyone," Cassian remarks quietly. "Especially after losing everything."

"Not everything," Leia replies, stressing the first word. "But," she adds, "more than I thought anyone could lose." She stares at him from the corners of her eyes, and even the shadows of her eyelids doesn't mar the intensity of gaze. "I think you understand." 

How could he? Comparing the loss of Fest to that of Alderaan was like losing a tree to decay versus a forest fire. But Cassian holds her gaze in his, sees the grief she doesn't speak aloud, and remembers the feeling of their hearts pressed together. Pain is a universal language, after all. 

"I do," he murmurs.

"I wish you didn't."

"I wish nobody did," Cassian echoes.

Leia shakes her head slowly. "Every time I think about it... I can't believe it. It makes me so angry, I just..." Leia lifts her hands then unceremoniously drops them into her lap. 

Cassian can only understand. "It's why we fight, Leia," he says, feeling himself be pulled towards her. "Not just out of the anger, but out of the hope that we can fix things too." 

She looks up from her hands, a thin smile on her face. "You sound like my father."

Cassian relaxes and allows himself to smile as well. "Well, my father was the one who told me that. I believe he fancied himself some sort of poet." 

"Really?" Leia leans forward, her hand dangerously close to his. "Do you remember any of his poetry?" Cassian takes in a slow breath that's shakier than he'd like, gaze wandering to the flask sitting on his desk. The mirth in Leia's eyes fades. "If you don't...." 

He shakes his head slowly. "I remember he once said that a land without flowers is a land without hope." 

"Like Hoth?"

"I think if he saw what we were doing here, he might've changed his mind." Leia smirks. Cassian wets his lips. "But I think he would've loved Yavin." His voice wavers when he says the planet's name, weighed down by memories of its blooms and humidity.

"I loved Yavin," Leia murmurs, as if to herself. It isn't hard for Cassian to believe her. There was some symmetry between Alderaan and Yavin, with their wide green expanses and mornings filled with bird calls. Its base had become a second home for all of the rebels who'd been with the Alliance since the early days - and Bail was the earliest of them all. Of course Leia would find comfort in it - and the memories it held - after her homeworld's destruction. Leaving had been difficult for everyone, but it must've been especially hard for her. He can tell by the look in her eyes.

"Well," he says, tilting his head at her, "we can always go back to visit. The humidity will be a nice break from-" Cassian gestures, "all this." 

Leia's lips part, pink like a flower in Yavin's forest, the tiny movement the only thing able to tear his gaze away from her eyes.

"I would love that," she replies, voice soft and husky and impossibly lovely. Cassian shivers.

"As you wish, Princesa," he says, so quietly her title is barely louder than his breathing. 

The sheets rustle as Leia slides into the gap he'd left between them, fanning the embers of his heart into an inferno. This close together, Cassian can't help but be absorbed by the rise and fall of her breathing, the bobbing of her throat as she swallows, the strokes of her eyelashes as they flutter.

Leia says his name, hardly audible over the roar of his heart. It has never sounded so sweet.

The physical distance between them is an insignificant number in a galaxy that measures by lightyears. Near-zero, technically. Leia has a way of making lightyears feel like nothing, yet the hair's breath between them like a chasm as deep and foreign as the Unknown Regions. He thinks if she blinks, her eyelashes might brush his cheek. He thinks if he lets go of the breath swelling in his chest, the next one he'll take will be hers.

When Leia touches the side of his face, he shivers, feeling both her warmth and the calluses on her trigger finger. Somehow she manages to be the fire to his ice and a perfect mirror. Two spies, soldiers, orphans. One alone in the shadows and the other alone in the light. Cassian isn't sure he's breathing, but he can't take his eyes off Leia. Gently, she brushes the fringe of his hair off his forehead, her touch as gentle as sunshine on Hoth, gentler than anything Cassian had felt in a long time. For a moment, they're frozen together. The moment Cassian realizes they aren't so different after all is the same moment he understands that this cannot last. 

Her thumb caresses his cheek, dragging across the stubble creeping along his jaw. Cassian's breath stutters as he exhales, breath warming her palm. They fit together perfectly.

"Stay with me?" she asks. 

Cassian has been asked to kill, to betray, to lie. Staying with Leia is the easiest thing he's ever been asked to do. His eyes flutter shut, the shield around his heart melting at Leia's touch. Cassian can't remember the last time he'd closed his eyes around someone else. Who was he to win against a woman who could bend the will of suns? Even Hoth's heart of ice surrendered to her rebels. How could a lone man like him be spared?

Leia's thumb stops moving, and already he finds himself missing the rhythmic contact, a sign he's falling down a slippery slope of desire and possibilities. Her hand slips down in slow motion, fingers just dipping into his collar as her thumb comes to rest along the base of his neck. He opens his eyes.

Staying is the easy thing. And the right choice is rarely easy.

"I can't," he breathes. Leia's hand stills. Only then does Cassian notice how cold her fingers are against his flushed skin. She pulls her hand away, and for a moment Cassian entertains the idea of being the type of being who'd reach out and take it, press his lips to her knuckles, her wrist, her cheek, her lips, each an apology and a promise. To give everything he wants to give, to offer everything she could ever take. 

Leia pulls her hand away, curling it into a fist. She closes her eyes and the stubborn ember of hope in him that refuses to be snuffed out imagines if it had been for another reason. But after a slow exhale they open, and the look in her eyes is is more of a blasterbolt to the heart than any glare she could've offered. It stills the soothing words on his tongue - _it's okay, you're looking for a place to put your grief, it's the only reason someone like you would fall for someone like me._ He has seen people fall for beings that they wouldn't spare a second glance for outside the confines of the Alliance, this war, this twisted galaxy; and the glimmer of hurt in Leia's eyes makes him understand why.

The shine fades to dulled ice.

"You don't need to say anything more. I understand," she replies coolly. Cassian knew Leia was never one for holding back - yet she speaks to him now as if he was her taskmaster, chastising her for a teenage crush. Solo had faced the full brunt of her ire - Cassian thought that had meant she'd cared for him. But if this was what breaking Leia's heart looked like, then he might as well have shot her himself. 

"I'm sorry," he whispers.

"Don't," Leia replies coldly. "Don't... don't look at me like that. Don't pity me like everyone else does."

Cassian's hand twitches, as if acting on its own desire to find hers and link their fingers together until the end of their lives. He grabs a fistful of the blanket instead. Cassian could never pity her. He knows it well - the slow burning anger that comes from being swaddled in the gazes of strangers. He knows it better than the warmth she'd offered him moments earlier. Cassian had been pitied ever since he'd lost his father, and he'd borne the brunt of it while limping through the corridors on the med transport. _The ghost of_ _Scarif, a pile of datawork and nightmares._

He isn't worth pity. Leia is far beyond it.

When he looks at her again, the tightness of her features morphs into something else. Thoughtful, even. "Ah," Leia says, the coldness chased away by something Cassian wants to label as _smugness._ As if she'd solved some puzzle he'd laid out for her. Cassian tilts his head, feeling his brows knit together. For once, he hadn't been lying. For once, his guard had been down. Yet the way Leia seems to be looking at him - through him - doesn't make sense until she says: "you still love her."

Who? Leia speaks with sureness, like a fact, not a question. Her lips twitch. "You don't have to say anything. But your face gives it all away." Leia tugs the blanket closer and Cassian lets the handful fall out of his open palm. She smiles, a hard angled line. "It's okay," she murmurs, "I understand." 

Cassian takes in a slow breath. "I never did," he tells her. Before Leia can interject he admits: "we never had the time. Just a possibility."

Leia nods slowly, pursing her lips. "The only thing we can have in a war, isn't it, Cassian?"

Cassian notes his name still sounds as sweet as ever when coming from her lips. His gaze flickers to the ground. "I suppose." The bunk creaks under him as he stands up. He can feel Leia tracking his movement, but when he turns to look at her she's inspecting the blanket once more. "I'll take your leave, your Highness." 

"Good night, Cassian."

Just as the door falls shut behind him, he hears her add: "and get some sleep." 

If his soul trembles as he leaves, Cassian doesn't pay it any attention.

* * *

_In the dream, they kiss, and Cassian neither cold nor tired._

* * *

A few days later Cassian leaves Hoth for his first solo mission after Scarif. 

Cassian's hand is always on his holster, even though he doesn't need it. His directive is to meet with resistance leaders in the Outer Rim, far away from the Core and his history of assassinations. He doubts he will ever lie in wait on a rooftop ever again. Whatever relief it brings him personally is quashed by the knowledge one of his agents is. He can only hope that every system he convinces to join the Alliance will cut a few years off the war.

But Cassian's primary duty is to listen as transmissions dissolve into static and read reports written by shaking hands - every time he does so, his hope intensifies in tandem with his despair.

He thinks of Draven often. 

He thinks of Leia even more. 

Cassian still sees her. She's as unavoidable as the justice she pursues; as inescapable as the cold on Hoth. And while Cassian is a man of unspeakable deeds, pressing on the bruises the likes of Solo had left on Leia's psyche does not fall under the real of his duties or conscience. So when Cassian is on base in Cracken's stead and so is Leia - which is more often than one would expect - he nods at her in the corridor, exchanges looks with her in meetings, and even talks to her at the table in the corner of the command room. Even while her gaze burns through him like the laser cannons that carved tunnels out of Hoth's ice. 

Leia bends the will of suns, but Cassian's place is in the shadows that exists just out of reach of the sunrise.

As much as he fights for the light, as much as he knows it lives in his heart, as much as it informs his every action - as much as he knows he is not a _creature_ of the dark, he knows that he cannot bask in the light. Her light. So while he answers her questions about Fest and prompts her with more about Alderaan, while he tells her about the neglected U-Wing he's started to work on, he carefully rebuilds the icy casing around his heart, in the hopes that the distance he keeps between them will push her towards someone better, nicer, happier, softer.

He loves her. He knows this now, as he watches beings across the Outer Rim fight for those they have loved and lost. 

He loves her, and that is why he keeps himself away from her. After all, isn't this rebellion built on the desire to keep others from suffering? And what greater suffering was there to lose loved ones?

Cassian had fallen to his death and broken almost every bone in his body, and he can't think of a better answer. While he hopes that the ripple of events set off by their actions on Scarif will result in justice and freedom throughout the galaxy, he knows whatever peace that ensues will not fall upon him. His world is ruined beyond recovery; his culture lost; and everyone he's ever loved, save Leia, is dead.

He knows the same dreadful reality applies to Leia - which is why he hopes she will find someone better.

* * *

_Draven pushes the sheet of flimsi across the table._ _"This is what we're asking from you," he says, in the unaffected manner the young man will grow accustomed to, regardless of the topic of conversation._

_"I am ready to give my life for the cause," he replies, voice unwavering. Too still, like puddles of melted ice before an orbital strike._

_The older man shakes his head slowly. "The price for freedom is higher than one lifetime, Cassian. Do you understand me?"_

_He looks at the flimsi, at his fate in his own hands, written out in scratchy charcoal soon to be surrendered to fire._ _"I understand."_

* * *

Their time on Hoth is concluded not with a bang but a faint beep just before midnight. Cassian and Leia are discussing supply routes, once again, when an analyst's alarmed voice rings out throughout the command room.

"Your highness!" The analyst exclaims, headphones pulled down in one hand. "There's movement in zone twelve. No patrols or speeders are scheduled to be in that zone tonight." 

"Organic?" Cassian asks, following Leia to the console.

"No, metal."

"A probe droid, then," Leia muses grimly. Their eyes meet over the analyst's head. 

"Is it emitting a signal?" If it is, their location is compromised. If it isn't... the chances are slim, but the Alliance would have time to evacuate.

A second analyst taps at her console, and a moment later static fills the comms. She shakes her head. "Negative, sir. But-"

"I'll go," Cassian says in unison with Leia. The analysts exchange unsubtle glances. Cassian doesn't offer them the argument they expect to see. He leads the princess to one of the speeders. 

Their journey is eerily quiet. Cassian sets down the speeder behind a snowbank out of the range of the probe. "Stay behind me," he says, and is glad when Leia does so. He's not sure what that means in their relationship. When Leia cares, she's loud about it. 

Snow crunches under their feet as they crawl up the snowbank, staying low to keep out of view. Wind whips around them as they approach the probe's last known location. It appears as a black smudge under a slightly grayer sky, hovering above the smoking remains of one of their sensors. A string of high pitched beeps fills the air, a blood-curdling sound that spells trouble.

"Oh, we're _karked_ ," Leia mutters from behind him, blaster drawn.

Cassian raises his. All it takes is a single blasterbolt. He doesn't anticipate is the roar of fire that follows. Cassian shoves Leia down the snowbank and uses the momentum to roll down after her. Shrapnel flies over the heads, glinting in the light of Hoth's three moons before lodging in the snowbank.

Leia curses. Cassian thinks she says something along the lines of _self destruct_ before he realizes his arm is burning.

"You're hurt! Cassian, _shavit._ "

Leia's hands are on him, pulling at his torn parka. He notices her white gloves shining with dark stains. Blood. His blood. 

Cassian extends his uninjured arm in an attempt to sit up. Leia takes it and gingerly pulls him up before carefully lifting his injured arm to bring the laceration into his view. 

"I've had worse," he muses.

Leia looks like she's about to hit him. Instead, she shucks off her vest and wraps it around the wound. Cassian winces, but Leia doesn't break her composure, mouth set in a hard line.

When Leia announces she'll be flying them back, Cassian doesn't protest. 

* * *

Leia's arms are crossed as she watches the med-droid stitch his arm up. Cassian isn't sure if she's mad at him or upset about abandoning yet another planet. He wouldn't be surprised if she'd come to like Hoth, especially after two years of living on dreary transport ships. Especially after losing Alderaan and Yavin.

Somehow, Cassian feels responsible for this loss, too. He shivers, the loss of his parka leaving him exposed.

"Go," he tells Leia while the med-droid unpeels a pacta patch. "The Empire must know we're here by now. Start the evacuation." He doesn't wince when it applies it, too used to the burn of expired patches to care for the dull sting. Leia peers at him with an stare rivaling the intensity of some suns. 

"I will," she replies, but does not move. "Promise me you'll get some sleep." 

"'l'll do my best." He will do his best by going to help with the evacuation as soon as Leia leaves, despite the grogginess pulling at his eyelids. His perpetual exhaustion makes for a potent cocktail when mixed with blood loss and painkillers. The droid chirps, its work done, and Cassian pulls his sleeve back down.

Leia watches the droid roll away then shakes her head. "Bacta works best while you're sleeping," she says, with all the firmness she uses to command the unruliest of soldiers. Cassian instinctively sinks into the pillows. "No pulling your stitches out because someone needs help carrying boxes. No spending all night on your datapad. Nothing. I'll take care of it." Her arms uncross, and she sits down beside him on the bunk. "Please," she adds quietly, "trust me." 

"I do."

He does. Cassian would never question her abilities. He's just painfully aware that Leia cannot be everywhere at once. He'd already missed the evacuation of Yavin. The Alliance needs all hands on deck, and Cassian was not one to care about himself, much less sleep.

The painkillers must be weakening the facade between his eyes and his emotions, though, because Leia continues to frown. "Okay," replies. "I'll trust you, too."

The soft affirmation from her hurts him more than her steely, commanding voice. It almost makes him want to smile. Leave it to Leia to know exactly which buttons to press.

"Cassian," she says, and she makes his name sound lovely once more. Whole, full, instead of ringing hollow. "You took that hit for me. So will you listen if I tell you to sleep?" Leia's gaze is warm, liquid, beautiful as always despite the bloody fingerprints on her jacket and her hard expression. Her voice is too soft to be angry. Only tired at most. "Even just to lie down and shut your eyes? Long enough for the bacta to work?" 

"If it's an order," Cassian replies, his voice feeling as dry as his mouth. Despite his attempt at humor, Leia seems disappointed.

"Will you believe me if I told you the world won't end while you're asleep?"

Cassian sighs. "It already has, once." Leia's jaw tightens.

"My world, you mean." She traces circles on the bedsheets, then jabs her finger into the mattress. "Yes. It did, didn't it? While you were sleeping." Leia taps her finger, lost in thought.

"Leia," he calls her, because nobody is around, here, not even the med-droid. "It's okay." 

"Is it?" she replies coldly. "You won't listen, Han won't listen, nobody listens to me and all I want to do is _help them_ -"

"That's not what this is, Leia."

"Then what is it?" she snaps. 

He reaches out, palm flat against the bed, inching forward until his finger hooks Leia's. Startled, Leia looks down, then back up at Cassian. "I'm sorry," he murmurs, frozen by her eyes. "For everything." 

Leia's hand closes around Cassian's. "You blame yourself for it, too, don't you?" she says quietly. He nods. 

"Because I fell, and..." Jyn was shot, so it took her longer to make it to the tower, so the transmission was delayed, so the Tantive was captured, and - "I'm sorry, Leia." 

"I blame myself too," Leia tells him. "Every day, I come up with something different I could've done. But it doesn't help anyone." She sighs. "So I try and help others. Like you."

Cassian doesn't think, at first, that her _like you_ meant she'd tried to help him, but then he remembers: _no_ _datapad._

_All I want to do is help them._

_You used to call me Princesa._

"The datapad," he says, voice suddenly hoarse. "On Yavin. That was _you_." 

Leia offers him a wry smile, stroking the back of his hand with her thumb. "It was." 

He processes her statement slowly, hindered by the fog of painkillers, and, he admits, her amusement. "W-why?" Cassian stutters. "Why... why me?" 

Leia's eyes fill with more sadness than he anticipated. "You think I haven't noticed what you do? Helping the medics, working on the speeders? All those little things you do for others? I don't know if you're trying to make up for what you did for us, for the cause, but even those things... Cassian, this Alliance would be nowhere without you." She takes a deep shaky breath. "I would be nowhere, about you. You, specifically, Cassian, give me so much hope. And I hate how hopeless you've become."

"Leia..." he starts, then shakes his head. He squeezes her hand instead, finding his fingers as warm as hers. "I just..." 

"I know. I do it too. I think I know what's right, I think... I think I'm controlling others... but we all chose to be here, didn't we? And Cassian," Leia adds, laying on the thick regal tone, "if that doesn't convince you, then if the... as the princess of Alderaan's people, if I tell you I forgive you, if I tell you that I'm choosing _you_ ," she says, with all the brightness of Alderaan's star, "will you believe me?"

Cassian's breath is sucked out by a vacuum similar to the one Alderaan had left in its place. But instead of coming to pieces, he feels as though someone - Leia - has put him back together.

Or at least, given him the means to do so.

"I do," he says, slow yet sure.

Leia smiles and lifts his hand onto her knee, squeezing it as she does so.

"Then go to sleep, Cassian."

He smiles, a crinkling of his eyes more than a twist of his lips.

"Good night, Leia." 

* * *

_Her brown hair is loose, which is how he knows it's a dream. Still, he reaches out to her, gently tucking the locks of hair behind her ears. She smiles at him. Frowns. Giggles. Shouts. She is a stranger, a friend, a lover._

_Sometimes he feels a pulse under his fingertips. Other times he doesn't. Tears seep from his eyes, sweetened by joy or brittle with grief. She wipes them away with her thumbs._

_"Do you think any of us want this for you, Cassian?"_

_He shakes his head. Her lips curve into a smile, beautiful yet sad._

_"Then honour us. Defy them."_

* * *

Cassian awakens to the warmth of a bedsheet pulled up to his chest and the blaring of a klaxon rumbling through the ice. For a moment he wonders if he's been transported through space and time to his childhood on Fest, where cold mornings were coloured by warnings of Republic ships entering the atmosphere. Then Leia's unmistakable voice, crackles through the comm system, coolly ordering all pilots to gear up and head to the hangar. 

He sits up, surprised at how the pain in his arm has ebbed to a bearable numbness. Peering at the wall chrono, Cassian is amazed by the number that blinks at him. He'd slept for a few uninterrupted hours, and the evacuation was now underway. Cassian tosses off the bedsheets, quickly folding them and passing them on to the nearest laundry droid. It hands him his stainless parka before scurrying towards the transport hangar. 

Cassian shrugs it on, noting that the arm had also been mended, and is halfway out the door when a loud boom rattles the corridor. A falling ship, perhaps, or an orbital strike. But if Leia had gotten the deflector shields up in time, then the attack meant that the Empire was on planet. 

He breaks out into a run.

The control room remains untouched, but overflowing with a flurry of activity. Leia paces between a console and one of the maps, speaking into her headpiece while Threepio frets behind her. Cassian gestures for the remaining analysts to leave and picks up the nearest headset, leaving him with Leia, Threepio, and General Rieekan. He sinks into one of the seats, picking up where one of the analysts had left off. The situation is grim. Cassian watches a trio of speeders take down an AT-AT before two of the three speeders blip out of existence.

Another blast shakes the command room, knocking over one of the map displays and sending an avalanche of snow spilling from the cracked roof. The Empire is gaining ground.

"We need to send transports out two at a time," Cassian says. Rieekan frowns.

"I don't know if the escorts can-"

"We have no choice, General," Leia interrupts, gaze flitting over Cassian. "There's not enough time." He nods, and she returns the gesture. Under the grace of a princess and the authority of a General, Cassian sees a layer of warmth in her expression. It fades quickly as Rieekan calls for the last ships to take off before dismissing himself from the command room.

"Your highness we must-" Threepio exclaims, interrupted by Leia reassigning troop positions. Cassian looks up from the console. "Your-your highness-Princess-" 

"Leia," Cassian says, pulling his headset away from his mouth, "you should leave with General Rieekan. I can manage-"

"No," Leia snaps, "we stay together."

Cassian doesn't have a chance to process her reply when another blast rocks the command room. Closer and more violent than the rest, it launches Threepio across the room and Leia slamming into his chair. She grabs his uninjured shoulder for balance as Cassian sticks his foot out to keep Threepio from crashing into one of the maps. 

"Imperial troops have entered the base," an eerily calm voice announces over the comm system. "Imperial-" 

"Oh, I've had enough!" Threepio exclaims.

Cassian would be pressed not to agree. "We should go, Leia," he tells her, "you've done a wonderful job, but it's time for us to go."

Leia nods. For a fleeting moment her mask slips, leaving Cassian privy to the sheer depth of her exhaustion. He covers the hand on his shoulder with his own. Leia squeezes it before grabbing Threepio and running out the door. 

Cassian recognizes the irony of surviving the Death Star's laser only to be entombed in ice. He sends out the last evacuation call then gets up to follow the others.

An explosion racks the corridor, bringing down a shower of snow, ice, and a majority of the roof. Leia yelps and Cassian catches her before she stumbles. She rolls with him, pushing them both against the nearest stable wall and out of the falling chunks of ice. Echo Base was hellbent on reminding him of the past, even at the very end. Cassian stifles a shuddering breath at memories of fire and falling ice.

"Let's go to the hangar." His jaw brushes Leia's cheek. Leia's breath ghosts over him as she nods. He barely registers Threepio's fretting as he pulls his body away from her, while reaching for her hand. Leia takes it and the two of them, followed by Threepio, sprint to the hangar.

It is empty save for the lonely old U-Wing sitting in a forgotten corner. Leia activates her comm, telling the transport to leave without her as their boots clang on the ramp of the ship, almost as loud as Cassian's heart in his ears. This is a ship he once piloted, the ship that gave him the title of Captain, the ship that Leia's father had sourced for the Alliance. 

Unfortunately, Kay wasn't around to prep the ship for take off. Cassian's back protests as he collapses into the pilot's seat. Relinquishing his thoughts to muscle memory, his hands fly across the dashboard switches as he initializes the ship's launch sequence. The ominous thump-thum-thump of stormtroopers echoes ominously in the hangar as Leia hops into into the copilot's seat, her feet too short to reach the floor.

The U-Wing's engine splutters to life just as red blasterbolts start to fly past the viewport. "Hold on tight," Cassian mutters, the click of Leia's belt and Threepio's _oh dear_ muffled by the screech of the S-foils sliding into backwards formation. A moment later, they're in the air, and Leia unleashes a burst of fire on the stormtroopers, hopefully buying more time for the ground fighters.

Cassian thinks he sees the fluttering of a black cape just before he guides the U-Wing out into atmo and the thick of the battle. Leia gapes at the sight of the Imperial fleet sprawling before them. Cassian doesn't have to think twice before pushing them into hyperspace.

They sit in silence, until Threepio says:

"I do hope Artoo and Master Luke are doing alright."

Cassian swivels in his chair. "I'll let you know when they check in." His gaze flickers to Leia's, who's resting her chin on her fist, exhaustion ruling over her features. "You should go get some sleep," he suggests quietly. "There's a bench in the hold." Leia nods, disappearing into the hold with Threepio.

* * *

For once, checking in on his active agents is the less stressful task. Cassian calls into the Alliance flagship, letting _Home One_ know of their status. When the call ends, Cassian's left staring at a set of coordinates. The Alliance is homeless once more, yet not devoid of hope. They'll get through this. They have to.

It's much easier for him to wrap his mind around the future with Leia soundly asleep in the hold just behind him. Even with a wall between them her presence manages to make the emptiness of space feel warm. Times are dangerous for all of them, and yet, Cassian feels less burdened than he has been in a long time.

Leia is safe. His agents are, for once, all safe.

Skywalker, the Council, the rest of the Alliance - they'd lost many on Hoth, but each and every voice resounding through his comm is as firm as ever.

But it doesn't mean they have to move on without grieving.

Cassian unbuckles himself from his seat and rests his hand on the copilot's chair. The U-Wing he'd piloted was slowly corroding on Eadu's rainy cliff side. Still, the seat Kay had occupied for so many years was almost identical to the one beside him now. While the droid was also gone, taken by the bright light of Scarif, he'd managed to guide Cassian one last time. 

_Thank you, my friend,_ he thinks.

Cassian looks up at the sound of footsteps. Leia. He squeezes himself back into the pilot's seat, glimpsing Threepio's powered down form plugged into a charging port before Leia enters the cockpit.

"Commander Skywalker's embarked on a personal mission," Cassian tells her as she settles into the co-pilot's seat. "The rest of the fleet is rendezvousing-"

"Don't tell me," Leia interrupts. He doesn't have to be told why. "Is that where we're headed?" 

Cassian notices her feet are too short to touch the floor. A smile touches Cassian's lips as he pulls up a star chart. "I plotted a course," he explains as it lights up, "but I also did... this." 

He sits back as Leia leans over him and waits with baited breath. Cassian watches her eyebrows pinch together as she makes sense of the second route, and most important, its destination. They shoot up once she recognizes the coordinates.

"Yavin," she breathes, her fingers curling around the arm of his chair, brushing his. "Oh, Cassian."

"I..." Cassian starts, the explanation he'd planned escaping him while under the brunt of Leia's wide-eyed gaze. So much for knowing how not to break under interrogation. "I thought... we could, I mean, there's work to do, but even for a few days, to find supplies-" He sucks in a breath at Leia's parted lips, the brightness in her eyes, how radiant she looks with just a few hours' sleep. 

"Stay with me?" he asks shyly, the question that's been brewing in his mind for what feels like a lifetime. "Just for a little while?"

Leia beams. Warm, brilliant, unhindered by loss - all the brighter because of it. Cassian never thought he'd live to see it again, much less as a consequence of his own actions. 

"As long as you'd like," she replies.

Cassian sets the course.


End file.
